Bring Me Their Hearts(63)

“Say that one more time and try to act surprised when I explode from it.”

“If you exploded here and now, all my problems would be over. Well.” He thinks about this. “At least eighty percent of my problems. It’s like you don’t have ears. Either that, or you don’t believe in obeying your Crown Prince.”

“I don’t believe in obeying anyone, Your Highness.” I smile. “Least of all the entitled.”

“Entitled,” he murmurs. The waitress comes by, offering us more wine, but the prince refuses it brusquely. I take more, eager to drown out the hunger that’s slowly crawling its way up my throat.

“I used to drink,” Prince Lucien repeats when the waitress is gone. “I was thirteen—angry at the world. I’d spend my days drinking until I couldn’t feel anything, let alone the pain.”

I’m quiet. He doesn’t continue, so I ask the burning question.

“Does it hurt?” I motion to the bandage. Lucien looks surprised.

“I wasn’t aware blackmailers cared about the well-being of their victims.”

“If you die, I don’t get any more of your time.” I clear my throat. His surprise dims, a half-cocked smirk replacing it.

“It hurt when it first happened. But I had more pressing matters on my mind then.”

“Like saving a beautiful damsel.”

“You think so highly of yourself,” he says, but unlike Grace, it’s without ire. Just a clear, simple, slightly bewildered statement. I take his water cup and raise it to him in a toast.

“If I don’t, who will?”

He snorts, a rare almost-laugh. “So unwavering. You’re most definitely Lady Y’shennria’s niece.”

Those words burn in the nest of lies smoldering where my heart should be. I get the fleeting, impossible thought that it’d be nice if I really were related to her. If we really were family. If somehow, someday, she could treat me as one of her own.

But not in this life.

“I don’t want you thinking you owe me something just because I pushed you out of the way of some rubble or sent Malachite to guard you,” he insists, black eyes razor-sharp once more.

“Fantastic,” I agree. “I do prefer not owing anyone anything, ever. Makes things much easier at the inevitable end.”

The prince studies me, or rather, my mask. My eyes behind the mask. It feels as if he’s trying to peel away the layers of my defenses, my secrets, like a bird of prey peeling back skin and muscle from a kill. To redirect the intensity of his gaze, I point at the sword on his hip. It’s of strange make—white metal, and very gracefully wrought, with a basket handle carved like a nest of snakes. It looks somehow familiar.

“Is that yours?”

“No. I stole it,” he drawls.

“Aha! I knew it! Your stealing wasn’t entirely selfless.” He goes quiet, and my sardonic tone flattens. “It’s a very pretty sword, is all I meant.”

“Varia left me two things—this sword, and the crown. The latter wasn’t meant for me. A part of me hates her for giving it to me almost as much as for leaving me alone.”

That’s why it was familiar; the sword in Varia’s painting and his sword are the same. The stone wariness in his usually guarded expression vanishes—eroded by years of mourning, leaving only a young man behind. Not a prince, not an heir, not a target, but a brother. A boy. A human who’s lost as I have.

“And so you carry her sword around.” I grip the hilt of Father’s sword on my hip, tracing the grooves with my thumb. “Hoping beyond hope that maybe someday she’ll come back to get it. Hoping someday it’ll be gone from your waist because she took it back—because she’s as alive as you are.”

The prince’s eyes move to Father’s scabbard, his face unreadable.

“You’re not the only one who knows what it’s like to lose someone,” I say. “Or to desperately, foolishly hold on to whatever tiny scraps you have left of them.”

Prince Lucien drinks in the silence that falls after my words. He finally gets up, putting two coppers on the table, and leaves out the door. I follow. The cool night air kisses my flushed cheeks as I look around for him—finding him leaning against a stack of barrels. He looks so empty, despondent, like the first bitter snow of winter, like the first time I saw him—standing imperiously in front of me during the Welcoming. That wine might have been a little too strong, because I get all sorts of ridiculous ideas in my head about cheering him up, making him smile.

“If you want, we could be friends,” I say. “Instead of blackmailer and blackmailee.”

“That’s the worst joke I’ve heard from you yet.” He snorts.

“I’m serious,” I say. “You saved me. Twice. The least I could do is not force you to spend time with me.”

“What if I want to be blackmailed?” he asks. My head shoots up, and he catches my eyes with his own. “A prince can’t have friends. He can have subjects, certainly. But he can’t consort with those subjects, lest they influence his decisions. Lest they try to manipulate him for their own gain or assassinate him.”

His words sound rehearsed again, like they were said to him instead of independent thoughts he’s had. It almost sounds like something King Sref would say.